In class we viewed the film “Separate Realities”. This film consisted of two individuals vastly different religious life while only having a street separating their lives. Susie attended St. Paul’s Episcopal Church where she practiced public worship. She always expressed her concerns, questions, conflicts within herself etc., as she went through finding herself within her religion. It was highly important to her that she didn’t have any doubts and uncertainty and must fully believe within her religion. On the other hand, Glenn Stover, a member of the Baptist church considered himself to be born again and found his religion while working through his alcoholism. Stover has lost friends due to drinking less and believing in God more. Both individuals reevaluated themselves in their religion. Both individuals have very contrasting ways in which they express their religion. Glover is verbal on the topic, yet in a way where he wants people to understand God because of how much he believes God has helped himself. Susie is highly reserved with her religion and through the years has believed it to be a private conversation. Today I have been around both types of people; however, many people I am surrounding by specifically the college community tends to fall somewhere in between. Students tend to be open talking about the subject; however, it is rarely brought up in an everyday conversation.   This was interesting in comparison to Chaves chapters 1 and 2 of American Religion where there is explanation of the decline in the number of individuals that believe in a power. Which I believe in today’s society it can be found that many may not believe in a certain power, yet it doesn’t mean they are uninterested or unaware of that topic.  

The duration of the first week of class was spent introducing the subject of what religion is and the factors that play into how an individual views religion. Our experience in a certain culture, affects the image we perceive causing an effect on our story/memories that is connected to the community that surrounded or is surrounding ourselves currently. This chain reaction is explained further in the first section of assigned reading in McGuire’s text.  

McGuire describes a conversation that someone may have when visiting San Antonio, Texas. The conversation is most likely to start off with “What church do you go to?”. I was shocked by this being a popular topic of conversation during the first few minutes of being a conversation with a stranger. In San Diego California, where I grew up the conversation of what church someone may belong to or what religion they are affiliated with was hardly ever brought up in any conversation that I have been in. Even conversations with my own family members that was never discussed. A factor affecting this may have been that my family members and friends had various ideas of religion and who they were affiliated with and what religion meant to them or didn’t mean. When comparing this to McGuire’s description of San Antonio there is a vast difference. Religion can be from a certain perspective this unspoken factor in the world. Either people talk about it and won’t stop talking about it or hardly ever discuss their beliefs to others and stay to themselves. Therefore, when I read McGuire’s text and when other individual’s stories were shared in class, I found it interesting that even though many had not shared their experience before with their religion or past experiences to others before many of our stories were similar.